Lawrence of Arabia<\/em>) on time, but things were more than a little chaotic, and it took us quite a while to get through both Jordanian and Israeli security. \u00a0(I\u2019m not surprised. \u00a0Sometimes things go well and easily here. \u00a0Sometimes, unaccountably, they don\u2019t.)<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
We had a quite good buffet lunch in Jericho, in the occupied West Bank \u00a0(at a Palestinian tourist center cleverly called \u201cTemptation,\u201d after the nearby Mount of Temptation, the traditional site where Jesus was tempted by the Devil for forty days and forty nights).<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then we headed up into the Judean hills toward Jerusalem. \u00a0We tried to avoid Jerusalem holiday traffic by going slightly around the city to the north, but our plotting was to no avail. \u00a0We were still snared in a bad suburban traffic jam.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Finally, though, we got down onto the fertile coastal plain of Israel and reached our hotel in Tel Aviv.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Here, we met the rest of our group. \u00a0There will be a flotilla of three buses, each of them furnished with an Israeli Palestinian guide \u2014 the laws here require a licensed Israeli guide \u2014 and an LDS commentator. \u00a0(I\u2019m one of the latter, of course. \u00a0The other two are Brent Top, the dean of Religious Education at BYU, and Jack Welch, the founder of FARMS and the editor of BYU Studies.) \u00a0We\u2019ll be traveling in a pack, meeting at sites, and so forth.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Festivities begin tomorrow in earnest. \u00a0Now I need to sing for my supper.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Posted from Tel Aviv, Israel<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 Today involved a lot of driving. \u00a0A lot. \u00a0We hit the road at 5:45 AM, leaving our hotel at Petra. \u00a0We had to reach the border crossing between Israel and Jordan by about 10 AM, because that crossing was closing early today. \u00a0(It\u2019s the tail end of the Passover holiday.) \u00a0 We arrived […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>